The Brexit Bill, whose Second Reading we agreed on Monday will transpose all of the EU laws and rules and regulations onto the UK Statute Book on the day we leave. That will ensure the greatest possible degree of continuity, and will, I hope, assuage the concerns of all of those people who argue that Brexit will mean the end of their favourite EU rules - for workers’ rights, environmental protection and so on. Those things will be identical the day after we leave to the day beforehand, after which the UK Parliament can at its leisure, delete, amend or improve the corpus of EU law we have inherited. That process is an absolutely essential part of Brexit, and of ensuring a seamless handover to UK control, and so I strongly supported it in Parliament.

One aspect of the Bill has, however, caused a degree of angst both amongst we supporters of Parliamentary democracy vis-a-vis the Executive; and also amongst those who would like to scupper the Brexit process as a whole. It’s the so-called Henry Vlll Clause in the Bill which will thereafter allow Minsters to amend or repeal the EU legislation not by primary legislation- heard on the floor of the House; but by Statutory Instruments, which at most are debated ‘in committee’ upstairs. In normal times, I would be the first to squawk about any such clause, since it allows the Government too much power, and apparently lessens the scrutiny powers of the Parliament.

Yet if we were to treat all 20,000 or so EU Acts which are to be brought across as Primary Legislation (of which we have room for perhaps 20 per year), it would take us hundreds of years to consider it. And anyhow, do we really need to spend weeks discussing the EU labelling regulations when there are so many much more important things that we will have to be doing. Not only that, but the Henry Vlll clause will allow the Government to repeal or amend the EU legislation, but it will of course not create any new law; and there is a 2 year ‘sunset ‘ clause, which says that if it has not been implemented within 2 years it will fail. What’s more, of the 20,000 acts, 8000 were originally considered in our Parliament under Secondary Legislation procedures, the other 12000 became law without being considered at all. So why should it now be necessary to bog ourselves down by using Primary Legislation procedures to consider it?

So while I understand the concerns both of the pure libertarians, and of the Remainers, allowing Henry Vlll on this occasion makes very good practical sense. The people voted for us to leave the EU, and so it must now be. Those who disagree with the majority must not be allowed to use abstruse Parliamentary procedures to prevent it.

My Mother-in-law, Peta Keeble is a Yorkshire farmer’s wife with a courage, feistiness and directness which outshines even that formidable breed. “My friends and I are all hiding under the bed”, she confided in me this weekend. “North Korea, ISIS, Brexit, Trump. What is there not to be frightened about?” As Parliament reconvenes, albeit for a tokenistic two week sitting before the Party Conference Season (which, at a time like this I would have thought we could easily manage without), that perception of looming catastrophe should be at the forefront of all of our minds.

Kim Jong-Un’s nuclear test on the very day that President Putin was visiting Chinese President Xi was a carefully planned piece of ritual humiliation. Kim knows that China will not cut off their energy supplies, which would create economic collapse, and turbulence and worse at China’s borders. So they are children playing ‘chicken’ with oncoming vehicles. But the very fact that they understand international diplomacy and strategic positioning in that way demonstrates that leaving aside Kim himself, they are not mad. Their entire economy is one quarter of the amount of money Americans spend on pet food every year. One wrong move and they would be annihilated; and the US too is well aware of the catastrophic side consequences of any such action by them. It’s all about deterrence rather than action. It’s a complex game of three dimensional chess amongst America, North and South Korea, and especially China. Let’s hope it all ends in a stalemate.

Something of the same could be said about the Brexit negotiations. They are at a difficult stage with Barnier playing ‘tough cop’ and David Davis a sort of Clint Eastwood figure staring him down. They must both remember that old maxim that all good business deals end with both parties being a little unhappy about it. So of course we will pay out some kind of divorce payment. I would like it to be nil, M. Barnier £100 Billion. If it ends up somewhere between the two, people like me will be a bit unhappy, and so will the EU. After all at the moment our net contribution is £13 Billion pa, so even £30 or 40 Billion would represent only three years or so payments.

ISIS remains an existential worry, perhaps especially as we come close to a military victory over them in the Middle East. Unless we deal with their ideology and their funding they will become a multi-headed hydra under the sand, and will emerge with vicious consequences across North Africa, and of course here in the West. So we must not rest on our laurels, but use every sophisticated weapon we have to de-radicalise their people, and stop their use of, for example, the London money markets, at which they are great experts.

Human beings are intelligent. We, by and large, know what is good for us and what is not. We may take belligerent stances, test the other side to the limits, argue hard, fight hard; but after it all we find a way through the forest, and we know what is best for our people. So I would just say to Peta Keeble: “It’s worrying – of course it is. But there is a solution, and good people and true will find it.” In the meantime, let’s get out from under the bed.

The World reels from yet another Jihadi Daesh outrage - this time in Barcelona, but no different to Paris, Berlin, Brussels, London, Manchester or so many other places. Our hearts go out to the Spanish and to the bereaved and injured. We grieve, and we are resolute in never giving in to terrorism, and carrying on with our everyday lives as a kind of mark of defiance. All of those things are good and true and noble. But the trouble is that they just don’t work. No matter how many candlelight vigils, streets strewn with flowers we see, these evil people see a soft West, and a West which can be defeated by their wicked and violent tactics.

These people understand only one thing – strength. That has been proved throughout Iraq where Daesh are now virtually destroyed, and very nearly in Syria too. The Jihadi Caliphate was destroyed there by force of arms, by sheer power. Yet unless we also destroy the ideology, and cut off their source of funding, this multi-headed hydra will just go to ground under the sand, and will without doubt reappear in all its ugliness elsewhere in the Middle East or Africa, and most certainly in yet more high streets in our Western cities.

We need to deal with their ideology at grass roots level. And we must be clear and firm. People who are returning from Iraq and Syria, for example, must be carefully quizzed by MI5. And if it turns out that they have been fighting for ISIS, they must either be thrown out of our country, or at very least have their passports removed and after due process of law they must be thrown into prison. Those people who the security forces know to be suspect must be investigated, irrespective of their bogus human rights claims; those who are in prison should be sent back to wherever they came from irrespective of the regime in their home country.

And we must strengthen our delicate western liberal consciences over such things as surveillance. I don’t mind being watched, and anyone hacking into my phone or computer would find nothing more interesting than a shopping list. We must be ready to lay the blame where it lies, and be outspoken and clear about it.

I was horrified by Sarah Champion being thrown out of the Shadow Cabinet because she identified (perfectly correctly) that it is Pakistani gangs who are raping and selling white girls across much of England, including in her own constituency. The political correctness of avoiding calling them Pakistani, has overcome anything approaching common sense. If they are Pakistani people committing these crimes, then we should say so. That implies no disrespect for the Pakistani community in general; quite the contrary. Just as we would not mind if it was said that ‘It was a white man who robbed the bank’- they should be quite happy to highlight that these criminals are of Pakistani origin, but are quite different to the hundreds of thousands of wholly law abiding, decent Pakistani people, many of whom I was brought up alongside.

Walking on politically correct egg-shells will not prevent another Barcelona, or Manchester. Locking these bad people up, or throwing them out of the country, may well help towards it, even if it bruises a few of our delicate Western sensibilities in doing so.

“MPs should be like butterflies. Flitting from flower to flower cross-pollinating, but never getting bogged down in any one bloom.” So said, I think, Enoch Powell. I sometimes feel like that.

I was glad that a few comments to the press about Big Ben and the (needless ) stopping of its ‘bongs’ for four years, which is, as I put it ‘Bongkers’, led to an every widening feeling of outrage amongst the general public, and a variety of experts coming forward to say it was totally unnecessary. I was one of those asked to Chequers for a drink last week, and (amongst other things) had a chat to the PM about it. I was very glad that she endorsed my view, eventually extracting an undertaking from Mr Speaker that the matter would be re-examined when the House is back in September. A small thing but mine own.

Similarly, my remarks in this column about the idiotic waste of money by Wiltshire Police examining the slender evidence against Sir Edward Heath sparked national comment, and a hasty announcement by the Chief Constable that he would produce the Op Conifer report ‘in the autumn.’ He will not be allowed to slip it into the long grass by passing it to the Independent Investigation into Child Sexual Abuse under Professor Alexis Jay, who have made it plain that they will look at the report with interest, but that consideration of it is well beyond their remit. That view was reiterated to me in an oral question to the Home Secretary before the House rose. The report must be public, and I will make sure that it is. If Sir Edward did anything wrong then we must know about it; but if there is no evidence that he did so, then the nasty slur against this PM’s good name must be expunged for ever.

My heart was warmed by an email from a serving police officer, who, for obvious reasons will remain nameless. “I am a police officer with [] years of service, and your [column] has put a smile on my face and cheered me up no end on a damp and dreary Monday morning. The content was such that I agreed 100%. It brought back many fond memories of policing gone by, a situation I fear we will never get back to. I just wanted to email to thank you for your views and the way they made me smile.”

I am just back from a few days in the Arctic leading a little expedition to visit the British Antarctic Survey on Spitzbergen. The clear waters and warm days at this most northerly inhabited spot on the globe – just a few hundred miles away from the North Pole itself was more than enough to re-convince the 10 MPs and peers in the group of the reality and imminence of climate change and the retreat of the Arctic ice. We will not solve it ourselves, but visiting the distinguished British scientists spending year after year on retreating glaciers and spreading that word back in Westminster may be just doing a little useful cross-pollination.

A word here, a question there, some media comment, surgeries, voting, influencing Ministers. It is these small, almost invisible cross-fertilisations, flitting from topic to topic like a butterfly which is the very business of politics. And just from time to time, in the words of the late great Muhammad Ali, as well as “floating like a butterfly” we, backbench MPs, should also “sting like a bee.”

After the NHS, the greatest British iconic hero must be the Bobby on the Beat. It gives us a warm feeling to think of the policemen of yore – nice old fashioned uniforms, batons swinging as they stroll down our High Streets. “Evening all,” as Dixon of Dock Green used to say. “Mind how you go now, Sir.” Z Cars, then the Sweeney brought it a bit more up to date, then The Bill, Lewis, a Touch of Frost, and so many more. We love our coppers, even if our mental picture of them may well be at some variance with the reality on the ground.

What a magnificent operation the Newcastle Police carried out in catching and then convicting a large number of people smugglers, modern slavers, pimps, groomers, child rapists. Call them what you will. ‘Scum of the earth’ will do for me. I personally support the £10,000 given to the convicted paedophile for the extensive information he was presumably able to provide. The end really does justify the means if his information has led to dozens of these people being taken off our streets, despite the bad taste it may leave in our mouths. The policing skills and methods needed for that kind of operation are well away from anything we have seen on TV.

Closer to home, however, I very much regret the recent announcement that the police stations in Calne and Malmesbury are to close, to be replaced by some kind of ‘police touchdown point’ whatever that is supposed to mean, and in Royal Wootton Bassett there will be a ‘Community Police Team Hub.” (Why can’t these people just use ordinary old-fashioned language which the average reader would be able to understand? They might meet less outrage if they did.) Whatever they may be, they just won’t replace that comforting blue light outside the Police Station. But there again, the good old Police Box, beloved of Sergeant Dixon is now only remembered as the Tardis in Doctor Who, and I guess that technology must mean that policing methods constantly move on.

Perhaps Wiltshire Police resources would be a bit less stretched if they were not wasting £2 million and 18 full-time officers on a pretty pointless investigation of allegations made against the late Sir Edward Heath. He’s dead, for goodness sake, and the case against him seems pretty flimsy to say the least. They’ll be looking into Jack the Ripper or Henry Vlll who had a nasty habit of chopping off his wives’ heads next. What a waste of time. I have made my views known in very plain terms to the Chief Constable, and I hope that he will take steps to wrap up this idiotic waste of public money with no further delay.

We all have the highest respect for our policemen and women, and they do a magnificent job. But there are too few of them; officers are under constant stress and strain; and it is my view that the scarce resources they do have are sometimes quite wrongly directed by senior staff and officers. Maybe it’s time to get back - just a little – to Community Policing. And who knows? Perhaps a bit of Dixon of Dock Green and The Sweeney would do law and order locally an awful lot of good.